I've turned and come quickly back east. After floating in the Colorado-to-Montana stripe for 6 weeks

the pace has changed so that Lola and I have been driving every day, laying over for only a night at a time. We've been visiting with friends the entire way

Ezra orchestrated a meal of steamed buns, soy milk, and etc for Thomas and I on the hood of my truck with the hazard lights on in China Town, Chicago before he left to fly to London. It was hot driving the truck and trailer through Dan Ryan Expressway traffic!

Grandpa John led me in washing the truck the moment I arrived in Iowa and Cindy made me a present of a box of a year's-worth of preserves. I found this trash can he'd made for his car, exactly the kind of thing I hope to do in the trailer.

I got to see where Ralph and his 9 siblings home-schooled in their old house in Mt. Pleasant, MI. The basement was full of well-used carrels and bunk beds, now for 12 interns at the church. It was the hardest-working house I've seen this trip.

In Wisconsin Bo took us boating and we saw osprey diving and sandhill cranes, Krista gave me cherries and the treasure of her great uncle Oluf's handmade knife, and Eve took me to the finest fast food in the Mid-West.

Eamon and I got to see the fleshy underside of a snapping turtle.

Dear Tim has been driving with me since Michigan. (He's not peeing here, just catching the shade)

We were stopped and searched at the Canadian border because I couldn't hold my tongue and let them know we were carrying two tomatoes, an avocado, and eggs. So we lost those but it was for the best because Lola licked the border patrol when I let her out and they all came over to look at the trailer as I opened it up. There were no pictures allowed, though.

In Toronto, Carter had cooked us a beautiful pasta dinner with tomato sauce

and I slept well in municipal parking. Someone looked in in the morning through a crack in the drapes and we shared the surprise but then he gave me a thumbs up and disappeared.

Tim allowed me to sleep through the heat and he towed us through Canada for a few hours while I napped in the back. It was noisy and comfortable and I learned about some parts that were moving more than I expected as I bumped in and out of sleep.

We found another sitting spot behind a car wash.

This is a jail cell for a fly.

Two kinds of dinner in Minnesota. Sarah is a wonderful cook and uses almost exclusively her hands as cooking implements.

Traveling like this is very different from what I had been doing before. I haven't been building, hardly, but I've been using the trailer harder and that wears away the parts that don't work. reverse building. And, many more people have seen it.